A Last Confession - Poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

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Our Lombard country-girls along the coastWear daggers in their garters: for they knowThat they might hate another girl to deathOr meet a German lover. Such a knifeI bought her, with a hilt of horn and pearl.Father, you cannot know of all my thoughtsThat day in going to meet her,—that last dayFor the last time, she said;—of all the loveAnd all the hopeless hope that she might changeAnd go back with me. Ah! and everywhere,At places we both knew along the road,Some fresh shape of herself as once she wasGrew present at my side; until it seemed—So close they gathered round me—they would allBe with me when I reached the spot at last,To plead my cause with her against herselfSo changed. O Father, if you knew all thisYou cannot know, then you would know too, Father,And only then, if God can pardon me.What can be told I'll tell, if you will hear.I passed a village-fair upon my road,And thought, being empty-handed, I would takeSome little present: such might prove, I said,Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!)A parting gift. And there it was I boughtThe knife I spoke of, such as women wear.That day, some three hours afterwards, I foundFor certain, it must be a parting gift.And, standing silent now at last, I lookedInto her scornful face; and heard the seaStill trying hard to din into my earsSome speech it knew which still might change her heart,If only it could make me understand.One moment thus. Another, and her faceSeemed further off than the last line of sea,So that I thought, if now she were to speakI could not hear her. Then again I knewAll, as we stood together on the sandAt Iglio, in the first thin shade o' the hills.“Take it,” I said, and held it out to her,While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold;“Take it and keep it for my sake,” I said.Her neck unbent not, neither did her eyesMove, nor her foot left beating of the sand;Only she put it by from her and laughed.Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh;But God heard that. Will God remember all?It was another laugh than the sweet soundWhich rose from her sweet childish heart, that dayEleven years before, when first I found herAlone upon the hill-side; and her curlsShook down in the warm grass as she looked upOut of her curls in my eyes bent to hers.She might have served a painter to pourtrayThat heavenly child which in the latter daysShall walk between the lion and the lamb.I had been for nights in hiding, worn and sickAnd hardly fed; and so her words at firstSeemed fiftul like the talking of the treesAnd voices in the air that knew my name.And I remember that I sat me downUpon the slope with her, and thought the worldMust be all over or had never been,We seemed there so alone. And soon she told meHer parents both were gone away from her.I thought perhaps she meant that they had died;But when I asked her this, she looked againInto my face and said that yestereveThey kissed her long, and wept and made her weep,And gave her all the bread they had with them,And then had gone together up the hillWhere we were sitting now, and had walked onInto the great red light; “and so,” she said,“I have come up here too; and when this eveningThey step out of the light as they stepped in,I shall be here to kiss them.” And she laughed.Then I bethought me suddenly of the famine;And how the church-steps throughout all the town,When last I had been there a month ago,Swarmed with starved folk; and how the bread was weighedBy Austrians armed; and women that I knewFor wives and mothers walked the public street,Saying aloud that if their husbands fearedTo snatch the children's food, themselves would stayTill they had earned it there. So then this childWas piteous to me; for all told me thenHer parents must have left her to God's chance,To man's or to the Church's charity,Because of the great famine, rather thanTo watch her growing thin between their knees.With that, God took my mother's voice and spoke,And sights and sounds came back and things long since,And all my childhood found me on the hills;And so I took her with me.I was young.Scarce man then, Father: but the cause which gaveThe wounds I die of now had brought me thenSome wounds already; and I lived alone,As any hiding hunted man must live.It was no easy thing to keep a childIn safety; for herself it was not safe,And doubled my own danger: but I knewThat God would help me.Yet a little whilePardon me, Father, if I pause. I thinkI have been speaking to you of some mattersThere was no need to speak of, have I not?You do not know how clearly those things stoodWithin my mind, which I have spoken of,Nor how they strove for utterance. Life all pastIs like the sky when the sun sets in it,Clearest where furthest off.I told you howShe scorned my parting gift and laughed. And yetA woman's laugh's another thing sometimes:I think they laugh in Heaven. I know last nightI dreamed I saw into the garden of God,Where women walked whose painted imagesI have seen with candles round them in the church.They bent this way and that, one to another,Playing: and over the long golden hairOf each there floated like a ring of fireWhich when she stooped stooped with her, and when she roseRose with her. Then a breeze flew in among them,As if a window had been opened in heavenFor God to give His blessing from, beforeThis world of ours should set; (for in my dreamI thought our world was setting, and the sunFlared, a spent taper; ) and beneath that gustThe rings of light quivered like forest-leaves.Then all the blessed maidens who were thereStood up together, as it were a voiceThat called them; and they threw their tresses back,And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once,For the strong heavenly joy they had in themTo hear God bless the world. Wherewith I woke:And looking round, I saw as usualThat she was standing there with her long locksPressed to her side; and her laugh ended theirs.For always when I see her now, she laughs.And yet her childish laughter haunts me too,The life of this dead terror; as in daysWhen she, a child, dwelt with me. I must tellSomething of those days yet before the end.I brought her from the city—one such dayWhen she was still a merry loving child,—The earliest gift I mind my giving her;A little image of a flying LoveMade of our coloured glass-ware, in his handsA dart of gilded metal and a torch.And him she kissed and me, and fain would knowWhy were his poor eyes blindfold, why the wingsAnd why the arrow. What I knew I toldOf Venus and of Cupid,—strange old tales.And when she heard that he could rule the lovesOf men and women, still she shook her headAnd wondered; and, “Nay, nay,” she murmured still,“So strong, and he a younger child than I!”And then she'd have me fix him on the wallFronting her little bed; and then againShe needs must fix him there herself, becauseI gave him to her and she loved him so,And he should make her love me better yet,If women loved the more, the more they grew.But the fit place upon the wall was highFor her, and so I held her in my arms:And each time that the heavy pruning-hookI gave her for a hammer slipped awayAs it would often, still she laughed and laughedAnd kissed and kissed me. But amid her mirth,Just as she hung the image on the nail,It slipped and all its fragments strewed the ground:And as it fell she screamed, for in her handThe dart had entered deeply and drawn blood.And so her laughter turned to tears: and “Oh!”I said, the while I bandaged the small hand,—“That I should be the first to make you bleed,Who love and love and love you!”—kissing stillThe fingers till I got her safe to bed.And still she sobbed,—“not for the pain at all,”She said, “but for the Love, the poor good LoveYou gave me.” So she cried herself to sleep.Another later thing comes back to me.'Twas in those hardest foulest days of all,When still from his shut palace, sitting cleanAbove the splash of blood, old Metternich(May his soul die, and never-dying wormsFeast on its pain for ever! ) used to thinHis year's doomed hundreds daintily, each monthThirties and fifties. This time, as I think,Was when his thrift forbad the poor to takeThat evil brackish salt which the dry rocksKeep all through winter when the sea draws in.The first I heard of it was a chance shotIn the street here and there, and on the stonesA stumbling clatter as of horse hemmed round.Then, when she saw me hurry out of doors,My gun slung at my shoulder and my knifeStuck in my girdle, she smoothed down my hairAnd laughed to see me look so brave, and leapedUp to my neck and kissed me. She was stillA child; and yet that kiss was on my lipsSo hot all day where the smoke shut us in.For now, being always with her, the first loveI had—the father's, brother's love—was changed,I think, in somewise; like a holy thoughtWhich is a prayer before one knows of it.The first time I perceived this, I remember,Was once when after hunting I came homeWeary, and she brought food and fruit for me,And sat down at my feet upon the floorLeaning against my side. But when I feltHer sweet head reach from that low seat of hersSo high as to be laid upon my heart,I turned and looked upon my darling thereAnd marked for the first time how tall she was;And my heart beat with so much violenceUnder her cheek, I thought she could not chooseBut wonder at it soon and ask me why;And so I bade her rise and eat with me.And when, remembering all and counting backThe time, I made out fourteen years for herAnd told her so, she gazed at me with eyesAs of the sky and sea on a grey day,And drew her long hands through her hair, and asked meIf she was not a woman; and then laughed:And as she stooped in laughing, I could seeBeneath the growing throat the breasts half-globedLike folded lilies deepset in the stream.Yes, let me think of her as then; for soHer image, Father, is not like the sightsWhich come when you are gone. She had a mouthMade to bring death to life,—the underlipSucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself.Her face was pearly pale, as when one stoopsOver wan water; and the dark crisped hairAnd the hair's shadow made it paler still:—Deep-serried locks, the dimness of the cloudWhere the moon's gaze is set in eddying gloom.Her body bore her neck as the tree's stemBears the top branch; and as the branch sustainsThe flower of the year's pride, her high neck boreThat face made wonderful with night and day.Her voice was swift, yet ever the last wordsFell lingeringly; and rounded finger-tipsShe had, that clung a little where they touchedAnd then were gone o' the instant. Her great eyes,That sometimes turned half dizzily beneathThe passionate lids, as faint, when she would speak,Had also in them hidden springs of mirth,Which under the dark lashes evermoreShook to her laugh, as when a bird flies lowBetween the water and the willow-leaves,And the shade quivers till he wins the light.I was a moody comrade to her then,For all the love I bore her. Italy,The weeping desolate mother, long has claimedHer sons' strong arms to lean on, and their handsTo lop the poisonous thicket from her path,Cleaving her way to light. And from her needHad grown the fashion of my whole poor lifeWhich I was proud to yield her, as my fatherHad yielded his. And this had come to beA game to play, a love to clasp, a hateTo wreak, all things together that a manNeeds for his blood to ripen; till at timesAll else seemed shadows, and I wondered stillTo see such life pass muster and be deemedTime's bodily substance. In those hours, no doubt,To the young girl my eyes were like my soul,—Dark wells of death-in-life that yearned for day.Sig.And though she ruled me always, I rememberThat once when I was thus and she still keptLeaping about the place and laughing, IDid almost chide her; whereupon she kneltAnd putting her two hands into my breastSang me a song. Are these tears in my eyes?'Tis long since I have wept for anything.I thought that song forgotten out of mind;And now, just as I spoke of it, it cameAll back. It is but a rude thing, ill rhymed,Such as a blind man chaunts and his dog hearsHolding the platter, when the children runTo merrier sport and leave him. Thus it goes:—La bella donna*Piangendo disse:“Come son fisseLe stelle in cielo!Quel fiato aneloDello stanco sole,Quanto m' assonna!E la luna, macchiataCome uno specchioLogoro e vecchio,—Faccia affannata,Che cosa vuole?“Chè stelle, luna, e sole,Ciascun m' annojaE m' annojano insieme;Non me ne premeNè ci prendo gioja.E veramente,Che le spalle sien francheE la braccia biancheShe wept, sweet lady,And said in weeping:“What spell is keepingThe stars so steady?Why does the powerOf the sun's noon-hourTo sleep so move me?And the moon in heaven,Stained where she passesAs a worn-out glass is,—Wearily driven,Why walks she above me?“Stars, moon, and sun too,I'm tired of eitherAnd all together!Whom speak they untoThat I should listen?For very surely,Though my arms and shouldersDazzle beholders,And my eyes glisten,All's nothing purely!What are words said forAt all about them,If he they are made forCan do without them?”She laughed, sweet lady,And said in laughing:“His hand clings half inMy own already!Oh! do you love me?Oh! speak of passionIn no new fashion,No loud inveighings,But the old sayingsYou once said of me.“You said: ‘As summer,Through boughs grown brittle,Comes back a littleEre frosts benumb her,—So bring'st thou to meAll leaves and flowers,Though autumn's gloomyTo-day in the bowers.’“Oh! does he love me,When my voice teachesThe very speechesHe then spoke of me?Alas! what flavourStill with me lingers?”(But she laughed as my kissesGlowed in her fingersWith love's old blisses.)“Oh! what one favourRemains to woo him,Whose whole poor savourBelongs not to him?”E il seno caldo e tondo,Non mi fa niente.Che cosa al mondoPosso più far di questiSe non piacciono a te, come dicesti?”La donna riseE riprese ridendo:—“Questa mano che prendoÈ dunque mia?Tu m' ami dunque?Dimmelo ancora,Non in modo qualunque,Ma le paroleBelle e preciseChe dicesti pria.‘Siccome suoleLa state talora(Dicesti) un qualche istanteTornare innanzi inverno,Così tu fai ch' io scernoLe foglie tutte quante,Ben ch' io certo tenessiPer passato l' autunno.’“Eccolo il mio alunno!Io debbo insegnargliQuei cari detti istessiCh' ei mi disse una volta!Oimè! Che cosa dargli,”(Ma ridea piano pianoDei baci in sulla mano,)“Ch' ei non m'abbia da lungo tempo tolta?”That I should sing upon this bed!—with youTo listen, and such words still left to say!Yet was it I that sang? The voice seemed hers,As on the very day she sang to me;When, having done, she took out of my handSomething that I had played with all the whileAnd laid it down beyond my reach; and soTurning my face round till it fronted hers,—“Weeping or laughing, which was best?” she said.But these are foolish tales. How should I showThe heart that glowed then with love's heat, each dayMore and more brightly?—when for long years nowThe very flame that flew about the heart,And gave it fiery wings, has come to beThe lapping blaze of hell's environmentWhose tongues all bid the molten heart despair.Yet one more thing comes back on me to-nightWhich I may tell you: for it bore my soulDread firstlings of the brood that rend it now.It chanced that in our last year's wanderingsWe dwelt at Monza, far away from home,If home we had: and in the Duomo thereI sometimes entered with her when she prayed.An image of Our Lady stands there, wroughtIn marble by some great Italian handIn the great days when she and ItalySat on one throne together: and to herAnd to none else my loved one told her heart.She was a woman then; and as she knelt,—Her sweet brow in the sweet brow's shadow there,—They seemed two kindred forms whereby our land(Whose work still serves the world for miracle)Made manifest herself in womanhood.Father, the day I speak of was the firstFor weeks that I had borne her companyInto the Duomo; and those weeks had beenMuch troubled, for then first the glimpses cameOf some impenetrable restlessnessGrowing in her to make her changed and cold.And as we entered there that day, I bentMy eyes on the fair Image, and I saidWithin my heart, “Oh turn her heart to me!”And so I left her to her prayers, and wentTo gaze upon the pride of Monza's shrine,Where in the sacristy the light still fallsUpon the Iron Crown of Italy,On whose crowned heads the day has closed, nor yetThe daybreak gilds another head to crown.But coming back, I wondered when I sawThat the sweet Lady of her prayers now stoodAlone without her; until further off,Before some new Madonna gaily decked,Tinselled and gewgawed, a slight German toy,I saw her kneel, still praying. At my stepShe rose, and side by side we left the church.I was much moved, and sharply questioned herOf her transferred devotion; but she seemedStubborn and heedless; till she lightly laughedAnd said: “The old Madonna? Aye indeed,She had my old thoughts,—this one has my new.”Then silent to the soul I held my way:And from the fountains of the public placeUnto the pigeon-haunted pinnacles,Bright wings and water winnowed the bright air;And stately with her laugh's subsiding smileShe went, with clear-swayed waist and towering neckAnd hands held light before her; and the faceWhich long had made a day in my life's nightWas night in day to me; as all men's eyesTurned on her beauty, and she seemed to treadBeyond my heart to the world made for her.Ah there! my wounds will snatch my sense again:The pain comes billowing on like a full cloudOf thunder, and the flash that breaks from itLeaves my brain burning. That's the wound he gave,The Austrian whose white coat I still made matchWith his white face, only the two grew redAs suits his trade. The devil makes them wearWhite for a livery, that the blood may showBraver that brings them to him. So he looksSheer o'er the field and knows his own at once.Give me a draught of water in that cup;My voice feels thick; perhaps you do not hear;But you must hear. If you mistake my wordsAnd so absolve me, I am sure the blessingWill burn my soul. If you mistake my wordsAnd so absolve me, Father, the great sinIs yours, not mine: mark this: your soul shall burnWith mine for it. I have seen pictures whereSouls burned with Latin shriekings in their mouths:Shall my end be as theirs? Nay, but I know'Tis you shall shriek in Latin. Some bell rings,Rings through my brain: it strikes the hour in hell.You see I cannot, Father; I have tried,But cannot, as you see. These twenty timesBeginning, I have come to the same pointAnd stopped. Beyond, there are but broken wordsWhich will not let you understand my tale.It is that then we have her with us here,As when she wrung her hair out in my dreamTo-night, till all the darkness reeked of it.Her hair is always wet, for she has keptIts tresses wrapped about her side for years;And when she wrung them round over the floor,I heard the blood between her fingers hiss;So that I sat up in my bed and screamedOnce and again; and once to once, she laughed.Look that you turn not now,—she's at your back:Gather your robe up, Father, and keep close,Or she'll sit down on it and send you mad.At Iglio in the first thin shade o' the hillsThe sand is black and red. The black was blackWhen what was spilt that day sank into it,And the red scarcely darkened. There I stoodThis night with her, and saw the sand the same.What would you have me tell you? Father, father,How shall I make you know? You have not knownThe dreadful soul of woman, who one dayForgets the old and takes the new to heart,Forgets what man remembers, and therewithForgets the man. Nor can I clearly tellHow the change happened between her and me.Her eyes looked on me from an emptied heartWhen most my heart was full of her; and stillIn every corner of myself I soughtTo find what service failed her; and no lessThan in the good time past, there all was hers.What do you love? Your Heaven? Conceive it spreadFor one first year of all eternityAll round you with all joys and gifts of God;And then when most your soul is blent with itAnd all yields song together,—then it standsO' the sudden like a pool that once gave backYour image, but now drowns it and is clearAgain,—or like a sun bewitched, that burnsYour shadow from you, and still shines in sight.How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,Among those eyes grown blind to you, those earsThat hear no more your voice you hear the same,—“God! what is left but hell for company,But hell, hell, hell?”—until the name so breathedWhirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire?Even so I stood the day her empty heartLeft her place empty in our home, while yetI knew not why she went nor where she wentNor how to reach her: so I stood the dayWhen to my prayers at last one sight of herWas granted, and I looked on heaven made paleWith scorn, and heard heaven mock me in that laugh.O sweet, long sweet! Was that some ghost of you,Even as your ghost that haunts me now,—twin shapesOf fear and hatred? May I find you yetMine when death wakes? Ah! be it even in flame,We may have sweetness yet, if you but sayAs once in childish sorrow: “Not my pain,My pain was nothing: oh your poor poor love,Your broken love!”My Father, have I notYet told you the last things of that last dayOn which I went to meet her by the sea?O God, O God! but I must tell you all.Midway upon my journey, when I stoppedTo buy the dagger at the village fair,I saw two cursed rats about the placeI knew for spies—blood-sellers both. That dayWas not yet over; for three hours to comeI prized my life: and so I looked aroundFor safety. A poor painted mountebankWas playing tricks and shouting in a crowd.I knew he must have heard my name, so IPushed past and whispered to him who I was,And of my danger. Straight he hustled meInto his booth, as it were in the trick,And brought me out next minute with my faceAll smeared in patches and a zany's gown;And there I handed him his cups and ballsAnd swung the sand-bags round to clear the ringFor half an hour. The spies came once and looked;And while they stopped, and made all sights and soundsSharp to my startled senses, I rememberA woman laughed above me. I looked upAnd saw where a brown-shouldered harlot leanedHalf through a tavern window thick with vine.Some man had come behind her in the roomAnd caught her by her arms, and she had turnedWith that coarse empty laugh on him, as nowHe munched her neck with kisses, while the vineCrawled in her back.And three hours afterwards,When she that I had run all risks to meetLaughed as I told you, my life burned to deathWithin me, for I thought it like the laughHeard at the fair. She had not left me long;But all she might have changed to, or might change to,(I know nought since—she never speaks a word—)Seemed in that laugh. Have I not told you yet,Not told you all this time what happened, Father,When I had offered her the little knife,And bade her keep it for my sake that loved her,And she had laughed? Have I not told you yet?“Take it,” I said to her the second time,“Take it and keep it.” And then came a fireThat burnt my hand; and then the fire was blood,And sea and sky were blood and fire, and allThe day was one red blindness; till it seemed,Within the whirling brain's eclipse, that sheOr I or all things bled or burned to death.And then I found her laid against my feetAnd knew that I had stabbed her, and saw stillHer look in falling. For she took the knifeDeep in her heart, even as I bade her then,And fell; and her stiff bodice scooped the sandInto her bosom.And she keeps it, see,Do you not see she keeps it?—there, beneathWet fingers and wet tresses, in her heart.For look you, when she stirs her hand, it showsThe little hilt of horn and pearl,—even suchA dagger as our women of the coastTwist in their garters.Father, I have done:And from her side now she unwinds the thickDark hair; all round her side it is wet through,But, like the sand at Iglio, does not change.Now you may see the dagger clearly. Father,I have told all: tell me at once what hopeCan reach me still. For now she draws it outSlowly, and only smiles as yet: look, Father,She scarcely smiles: but I shall hear her laughSoon, when she shows the crimson steel to God.